Infatuated, Patton confided to a West Point classmate, “She’s been mine for twelve years.”

On March 31, 1945, Beatrice wrote to her husband wondering why Jean Gordon was still in Europe. Patton replied, “I am not a fool. So quit worrying.”

When, soon after, Patton learned that Jean Gordon was also having an affair with a young officer serving in a safe headquarters position, the general, as competitive as ever, ordered the young man transferred to frontline combat.

*   *   *

Late on the afternoon of April 17, Patton flies to Paris. His son-in-law has been moved to a nearby hospital, and he sits with Waters for a long discussion. The controversy surrounding the Hammelburg incident seems to be blowing over. Dwight Eisenhower reprimanded Patton, but little else is being done. It appears there will be no further repercussions.

Patton sits for breakfast the next morning with his old West Point classmate Gen. Everett Hughes. The two men are very close, and it is to Hughes that Patton confides his relationship with Jean Gordon.

The waiter hands Hughes a copy of the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes. Hughes smiles at an announcement printed in the paper, but says nothing as he hands the newspaper over to Patton.

Patton suddenly grins broadly as he reads the news that President Harry Truman has just nominated him for the rank of four-star general. He leans back in his chair as those all around him in the dining room who’ve already read the news wait to see his response.

“Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

*   *   *

The biblical David was also a great general. He was said to be “a man after God’s own heart,” despite the fact that he slept with his best friend’s wife, lied about the act, and then ordered the husband sent to the front lines so that he might be murdered in battle.

Yet David ultimately paid a steep cost for his behavior, losing a son at a very young age and eventually losing his entire kingdom.

Like David, George Patton knows himself to be a flawed yet God-fearing man. His recent bouts of duplicity have also cost more lives than the duplicities of of King David. But as Patton flies back to his headquarters in a plane newly decorated with insignia denoting his four-star rank, it appears that he will not endure the divine punishments that befell David. In fact, Patton has weathered the storm unscathed.

But as the devout general well knows, David once thought the same thing, too.

*   *   *

Patton’s single-engine L-5 Sentinel propeller plane flies low over the German countryside, en route to his headquarters. It is the quickest way to travel from one place to another, allowing the general to visit several of his units each day. Suddenly another aircraft drops down on him like an avenging angel. Guns blazing, the Spitfire fighter bears the markings of the British Royal Air Force, and attacks head-on.

Patton’s L-5 is an American-made plane. Yet with its wings mounted above the fuselage and the slow speeds caused by its fixed landing gear, the L-5 also bears a distinct resemblance to the German Fi-156 Storch.

Tracer bullets fly past the right side of Patton’s L-5. The small plane has no weaponry, and thus no chance of fighting back. The Spitfire misses on the first pass, almost colliding with the L-5 as it roars past, but is soon banking high into the sky and coming around behind them for another strafing run.

It is either a case of mistaken identity or a bold attempt to murder George Patton in broad daylight.

Patton reaches for his camera. He snaps several pictures of the RAF plane, even as his pilot takes desperate evasive measures that make the Spitfire miss them a second time. Patton is so terrified that he forgets to take the lens cap off the camera. His aircraft is no match for the Spitfire, which was so famously effective at defeating German Messerschmitt fighter planes during the Battle of Britain.

But the pilot who has been assigned to fly General Patton on this April morning is extremely good at his job. He pushes the stick forward, pressing the L-5 down almost right against the earth. Just one slip of his fingers and the plane will nose into the ground.

The Spitfire comes in low and shoots again. The shots miss, and the careless Spitfire pilot realizes too late that his angle of attack places him too low to the ground. A split second later, the British fighter plane crashes into the German soil.

“It flew so close to the ground that it could not pull out and crashed,” Patton writes in his journal that night. “The planes in this group had RAF markings on them, and I believe they were probably a Polish group flying for the RAF. Why there were out of their area, I don’t know.”

George S. Patton has lived to fight another day. “Four other planes were circling over us, but did not engage in the attack.”

Patton must now contemplate an obvious nagging question: Was the Spitfire attack an accident?6

21

BERLIN, GERMANY

APRIL 20, 1945

MIDNIGHT

The man who will be dead in ten days is marking his fifty-sixth birthday.

Adolf Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, is in the mood to dance, but the Führer merely slumps on the blue-and-white couch in the sitting room of his underground bunker. He stares into space, paying no attention to the playful Eva or to the sleek blue brocade dress hugging her thighs. She knows that the prudish Hitler doesn’t like her to dress provocatively, but on this occasion Eva does as she pleases.

The two of them, along with three of Hitler’s female secretaries, sip champagne. It is the end of what has been another long and depressing day for the Führer.

Adolf Hitler once dreamed of establishing Berlin as the world’s most cosmopolitan city, even though its citizens have long considered him to be an unsophisticated bore. Back in the days when Germany held free elections, the people of Berlin were almost unanimous in rejecting Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Even now, thirteen years later, Berlin is considered the least Nazi of all cities in Germany. To spite its inhabitants, Hitler had planned to rename the city Germania during the grand postwar rebuilding, thus wiping Berlin off the map forever.

The advancing Russians know nothing about Germania. And they are also not waiting until the end of the war to wipe Berlin off the map.

The armies of Joseph Stalin have the city almost completely surrounded. It is just a matter of time before it falls.

Eva Braun

Per tradition, Hitler was joined in the bunker for his birthday celebration this morning by the Nazi Party’s most elite membership: SS leader Heinrich Himmler, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, and chief of the operations staff Gen. Alfred Jodl, among them.

But now these killers are gone—for good. They have paid their respects to Hitler and are running for their lives, desperate to get out of Berlin and save their own skins, planning eventually to adopt new identities.

Only the most faithful followers remain. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary, continues to prove his loyalty by remaining in the bunker. Hitler is glad. It has been said that Bormann is so threatening that he can “slit a throat with a whisper.” A testimony to his character comes from none other than Hitler, the most callous of men. The Führer deems Bormann to be utterly “ruthless.”

Bormann is now upstairs on the top floor of the bunker, hard at work despite the late hour and the approaching danger.

There is still time for Hitler to find a way out of Berlin. The Soviets are closing in, but some roads remain open. As recently as yesterday, the Führer was planning to escape to his Eagle’s Nest retreat, high in the mountains of southern Germany. He even sent some members of the household staff ahead to prepare for his arrival. But he has since changed his mind, deciding to stay in the bunker, hoping against hope that the phantom divisions seen only by him will somehow repel the Russians.